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Yushan Scholar Leads NTNU’s Evolving Linguistic Studies
To strengthen the competitiveness of Taiwan’s higher education system and promote the quality of its instruction and research, in 2018 the Ministry of Education (MOE) launched the Yushan Scholars Project. The goal was to help Taiwan’s elite universities recruit top international talent by offering compensation packages that meet international benchmarks. The influx of the world’s brightest minds will allow new ideas and teaching methods to take root in Taiwan’s educational environment, while elevating the international standing of Taiwan’s higher education system as a whole. In 2021, NTNU invited Dr. Cheng-Teh James Huang, an alumnus of its Department of English and a current professor of linguistics at Harvard University, to become its first Yushan Scholar Distinguished Chair. Under the Yushan Scholars Project, for a period of three years Dr. Huang will partner with NTNU professors alongside researchers at other major institutions abroad on a number of initiatives. The results will hopefully raise Taiwan’s academic profile and reputation, as well as deepen interdisciplinary research and cultivate talents in the field of linguistics in Taiwan.
The interconnective and mutually validating relationship between linguistics and its sub-fields have created a highly interdisciplinary field of academic development that has the potential to stimulate areas of forward-looking research not traditionally associated with linguistics, such as brain research. Starting from the theoretical foundation of universal grammar and its ensuing interdisciplinary directions, internationally renowned expert in grammar theory, Dr. Huang, is set to lead teams of NTNU researchers in the areas of theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics, and neurobrain linguistics. In theoretical linguistics, NTNU professors of the Department of English and the Department of Taiwan Culture, Language and Literature will explore topics in syntax and semantics; in applied linguistics, research will be conducted in foreign languages and corpus linguistics, while neurolinguistics will focus on the processes and mechanisms of acquisition, comprehension, and the regression of language from a biological perspective (Figure 2). The Yushan Scholars Project is set to bring together researchers of international renown from across Taiwan and the world for what is to be a period of deep academic inspiration, discovery, and learning. Not only burnishing NTNU’s reputation for academic excellence, this period of interdisciplinary cooperation is likely to inspire new fields of research and encourage new scholars to join the field.
Platform for Greater Interdisciplinary Research
The research partnerships fostered through Dr. Huang’s coordination in the Yushan Scholars Project also brings greater visibility to developments at the Chinese Language and Technology Center (CLTC). Specifically, the Yushan Scholars Project has assisted the CLTC in the construction of its Language and Technology Online Work Platform. The platform, slated to go online in 2022, aims to assist professors and students in the humanities in important interdisciplinary research. Bringing together classical works and linguistic tools developed by experts in the fields of linguistics and information technology, it looks to overcome the reticence of those in the humanities regarding the study or use of the natural sciences. As the foundation for this developing platform, the CLTC has already established Taiwan’ most complete native speaker corpus (2 billion words), Taiwan’s largest foreign learner written corpus (5 million words) and Taiwan’s largest foreign learner spoken corpus (1.3 million words).
NTNU Alumni on the Cutting-edge of Linguistic Research
In addition to Dr. Huang’s numerous advancements in the theory of Universal Grammar (UG), he is the foremost linguist of the Chinese language; the impact and influence of his research have extended into every area of linguistic studies. Meanwhile, Dr. Chiu-yu Tseng successfully elevated traditional empirical phonetic analysis to quantitative approaches, supporting them through predictive models and statistics.
Figures 2 shows Dr. Huang and Dr. Tseng encompass the two main approaches in delving deeper into the field of linguistics. On the theoretical side, Dr. Huang continues to add to current understanding regarding the brain’s “mental software” of language use and acquisition through his observations of semantic and syntactic data. Meanwhile, Dr. Tseng has revolutionized phonetic and phonology analyses of realistic speech data through a top-down perspective with great implications and growing relevance for AI and computational linguistics, including for speakers of non-native languages.
World-Renowned Scholar in Grammar Theory
Yushan Scholar - Dr. Huang’s research concerns the scientific study of language as a ‘mirror of the mind’. By analyzing observable properties of language, linguists try to ‘hack’ into the brain to account for our knowledge of language. Much of Dr. Huang’s research is devoted to the discovery and explanation of language properties that are attributable to Universal Grammar (UG). His discovery of an important law of grammar called the Condition on Extraction Domain (CED) led to Noam Chomsky’s (1986) development of the Barriers system, with ensuing effects that make up important topics of research during the rise of Minimalism since the 1990s. CED remains an active topic of research today.
Another area of his research concerns the notion of Logical Form and linguistic typology. From a comparative perspective, Dr. Huang brought to light for the first time certain systematic argument-adjunct asymmetries under movement and attributed the asymmetries to the Empty Category Principle (ECP), a prominent module of the theory of UG at the time. The asymmetries were observed in both languages with wh-movement (like English) and languages whose wh-phrases do not move (they stay ‘in situ’, as in Chinese). This analysis gave rise to the typological view that languages possess the same set of substantive and formal universals (such as wh-movement) but they differ on a ‘derivational timing parameter’ on the application of relevant processes. Dr. Huang’s work in this area opened a new line of research in the field that has been adopted in the study of numerous wh-in-situ languages, and the LF-movement hypothesis continues to be entertained in much current literature.
Dr. Huang has made contributions to the advancement of Chinese linguistic study with original research on almost every major aspect of Chinese grammar: from phrase structure, passives, relatives, resultatives, to quantification, interrogation, light verbs and decomposition, as well as the interpretation of pronouns (reflexive, bound, or null pronouns) and their antecedents. In recent years, Dr. Huang has elucidated the theory of parameters, capitalizing on the robust analyticity of Chinese syntax and showing how parametric theory may insightfully characterize both synchronic variation and diachronic change. In the research on each topic, it is typical of his work to not only shed new light on some old problems in the traditional field of Chinese syntax but also contribute to current issues in general linguistic theory. Although most of his research is published as individual papers, some of his work can also be seen in the co-authored book Syntax of Chinese (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and the collected volume Between Syntax and Semantics (Taylor & Francis, 2010). A Festschrifts volume devoted to the theme of Chinese Syntax in a Comparative Perspective was published in his honor in 2015 (Oxford University Press).
In addition to linguistic research, for the past 40 years Dr. Huang has also been known for his university teaching and graduate advising. More than 30 students have completed their dissertations under Dr. Huang’s mentorship, and quite a few of them have become prominent leaders in their own countries and regions.
